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New Jersey Family Learns of Fertility Clinic Mix Up

A couple in New Jersey says they went years without knowing that the daughter they shared was not actually related to her father. Now they want to know who their child's biological father is, after it was revealed she has a genetic blood disorder. NBC 4 New York's Michael George reports.

(Published Thursday, Sept. 12, 2019)

Two years after a white couple in New Jersey gave birth to a baby girl through in-vitro fertilization, they realized that she had "Asian features" -- and now they want to know the identity of the girl's biological father.

Although the parents say they love their daughter and wouldn't change anything, they're suing the Institute for Reproductive Medicine and Science at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in what is the latest mix up at fertility clinics across the country, according to the family's lawyer David Mazie.

DNA results showed that there was 0% possibility that the northern Jersey man was the child's biological father. Mazie says the discovery was heartbreaking for two people struggling to have kids by themselves.

"They love her. She's their daughter and they wouldn't change anything from that perspective but it was devastating to find this out," he said.

The couple ended up getting a divorce, citing the stress of the fertility clinic mix-up, Mazie said. They are demanding financial compensation from the medical center as well as a list of sperm donors so they can find the child's biological father.

They want "to find out her genetic history and possibly have a relationship with her genetic father, who has no idea as we sit here right now, that he was this child's father," Mazie tells News 4.

The clinic says it is taking the matter very seriously and it's "thoroughly examining the alleged incident, which is said to have occurred in 2012."

The couple said in a federal lawsuit filed in the Eastern District of New York that after years of failed efforts to have children and spending over $100,000 to get pregnant at CHA Fertility, doctors used embryos that belonged to two other couples who had also received treatment there.